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Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

MORNING MESSAGE: The Empty Suit

OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "This was the debate that finally exposed Mitt Romney as an empty suit running a campaign that is disingenuous at its core. Romney's huffy response about his numbers came when the president exposed the sham. Romney wants voters to believe that he can lower tax rates for all, cut taxes on the middle class, raise spending on the military and bring the budget into balance. He can do this by closing unspecified loopholes and cutting unspecified spending – but without damaging anything Americans care about – the mortgage deduction, the child’s tax credit, the spending on Pell grants and student loans, on education and research and development. Nothing, as the president said, except 'Planned Parenthood and big bird.' As a successful investor, said the president, Romney wouldn’t buy this kind of 'sketchy deal.' Romney’s flim flam was finally exposed."

Obama Facts Pound Romney Lies

Obama relentless in debate. McClatchy: "…he cast Romney as an elitist who would help the rich, a chameleon who is all but lying to conceal his real agenda, a man whose scorn for the poor and working classes was revealed only in the secretly taped remarks in which Romney derided 47 percent of the country as freeloaders."

Obama won on everything, says Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky: "…who would have said three hours ago that Obama’s best moment of the night, yes, Obama’s, would be Benghazi? There were other moments. Obama won the immigration discussion. He won guns, to the extent anyone’s voting on that. He won taxes. Taxes—weird. I was shocked that Romney stood by his 20 percent and insisted that his math does add up … And finally, the 47 percent moment. Why would Romney stick out his jaw like that?"

Obama used "Romney against Romney" says The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner: "He demolished the former Massachusetts governor's bogus arithmetic on the tax cuts … he used Romney’s support for more tax cuts for the very rich to remind the audience that with $20 million dollars of annual income, Romney pays a lower rate of taxes than they do."

Romney failed to distinguish himself from Bush. NY Mag's Jonathan Chait: "He dribbled it off the tee, promising he would do more to promote domestic oil drilling, and then launching into a digression about China, before ending on [a] rambling monologue … So Romney differs from Bush because … he wants to cut down on taxes and regulation, and opposes Obamacare?"

Romney tells poor to get married in order to reduce gun violence. The American Prospect's Sally Kohn: "…the number of one-parent households in a community does not correlate with levels of gun violence. What does correlate with the increase in gun violence? Er, gun ownership … conservatives would rather increase the number of marriages than increase wages."

Obama Makes Positive Case For Second Term

"Finally, Obama Makes the Case for Four More Years" says Time's Michael Grunwald: "Part One is that Obama inherited an ungodly mess … Part Two is that Obama made the mess better, moving the economy from dizzying job losses to 5.2 million new jobs … Part Three is that congressional Republicans blocked him from doing even more … Part Four is that Romney represents a return to the Bush policies that got us into the mess in the first place … Part Five is that Obama has basically done what he said he would do."

Pollster Stan Greenberg praises Obama's emphasis on a second-term jobs agenda, to W. Post: "I thought he made the determination from the first second to be forward-looking — laying out each element of his economic plan. He repeatedly said, this is what I want to accomplish in a second term. While he clearly sounded confident about what he had done, he didn’t say, give me a second term because of a job well done. He repeatedly said , I would like another term to do this or that — on energy, education and others. I think voters will feel they heard him talking about the changes and progress he wants to achieve."

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